DIAL RECORDS 2000 - 2025
To mark the 25th anniversary of Dial Records, VIEW presents L’Extinction des Étoiles—a musical and visual diary chronicling a quarter-century of quiet collaboration between David Lieske and Peter Kersten. The exhibition includes a new installation by Than Hussein Clark, alongside contributions from Christian Flamm, Heji Shin, and Amelie von Wulffen.
Founded in Hamburg in 1999 by Peter M. Kersten (aka Lawrence) and David Lieske (aka Carsten Jost), Dial Records has become a defining force in post-minimalist dance music, with a focus on deep house and techno. Over the years, the label has released influential works by artists such as Pantha du Prince, Efdemin, John Roberts, Pawel, Christian Naujoks, Roman Flügel, Ben Kaczor, James K, DJ Richard, XDB, Soela, Portable, Kassian Troyer, and Tracey.
Visual art has always been central to Dial’s identity, with cover artwork contributed by renowned artists including Amelie von Wulffen, Sergej Jensen, Thomas Eggerer, Anna Möller, Julian Göthe, Friedrich M. Ploch, Rob Kulisek, among others.
DIRK V. LOWTZOW AND DAVID LIESKE
DVL That is why Adorno said: “Whoever thinks is not angry.” It is simply a very basic observation, closely connected to the present time. For thinking takes time — and during that time, anger fades.
DL Probably why Mao Zedong warned the crowds: “Do not read too many books, for those who read too much won’t be good revolutionaries.”
DVL Yes, exactly. Because simply through the time it takes to read something — whether a book, a magazine, or even just a long newspaper article — one is not emotionalised, angered, or thrown into affective agitation. Instead, a certain rigour emerges: one thinks, and one thinks the matter through.
DL Not long ago — or perhaps it was still about a year back — I found myself as a visitor of the Rote Flora again, at the so called: Archive of Social Movements. The entire atmosphere seemed strangely detached, like a dusty backdrop for a live-action role-play.
DVL Yes, of course, it had always been so. But consider this: it is often actions that give rise to dreams — not the other way around. And the Rote Flora still stands — and that, in itself, is not a small achievement. In its way, it has become something of a true utopian place. Countless affairs have unfolded there, too many to name.
DL It really is true... Let us briefly speak about the time we first met — the mid-to-late 1990s and the early 2000s.
DVL What comes to mind is that, as someone who played in a rock band like myself in Tocotronic signed to L’Age D’Or, I naturally also knew Charlotte and was familiar with Ladomat 2000. That was simply part of my world. I had already been listening to a lot of house music back then — techno was never really my thing, but house music very much was. In Hamburg, there was quite a large house scene — especially at the Front, but also at the Edeka on Davidstraße, which I absolutely loved. At the time, I was living just around the corner and often went there to dance on my own, because I loved that Strictly Rhythm, Nervous, Chicago, and Detroit house sound so much. But I somehow missed the new scene that was beginning to grow around you. And later, you became Charlotte’s assistant and you were working at the L’Age D’Or office with her. For me it felt like a Thunderstruck — almost an epiphany — when your “Hamburgeins” sampler was released, a collaboration between Dial and Ladomat 2000. I still clearly remember: it was around the time we were working on our white album. Attentive observers might have noticed. The two album covers are so similar that it’s easy to confuse them.
DL Yes, very similar indeed.
DVL And for me, it was a total spark, an initial ignition: the idea of combining a minimalist aesthetic with music that was electronic, yet still carried the spirit of indie pop or indie rock — and also a certain sense of romance.
DL Yes, and I believe that in this sense, “our” music was indeed strongly influenced by bands like Tocotronic, or simply by a certain — how shall I put it — Gen-X-like attitude, one in which everything identified as the mainstream was fundamentally refused. The sense of resistance lay precisely in putting very little effort into the music, in reducing everything down, and in withdrawing as much as possible
…a bit of a slacker attitude.
DVL Totally, yes, exactly.
DL At the same time, I also felt there was an enormous depth of knowledge — especially with you, but also with Pete, and with Paul Kominek and others who were around you at the time. A profound understanding of the connections between fashion, music, politics and already, in some ways, art. I was familiar with art, but with fashion, not at all. I still remember it so clearly. I think we were at a Ladomat event at the Popkomm in Cologne, where we played with Phantom/Ghost — and you were DJing there, or maybe you and Pete together. Afterwards, we drove back in some strange old bus. You had these stacks of weird brochures — I don’t even remember exactly where they came from, maybe from some boutiques in Cologne. There were all these strange catalogs, from Dries Van Noten and Martin Margiela. I found it absolutely fascinating.
DVL That was truly still a time when the Internet was in its infancy. It practically didn’t exist, and you could really only inform yourself about fashion by buying magazines. My favourite magazines were Self Service, Dutch, and Purple — and they only came out two, maybe four times a year. You would spend months with a single issue. And even today, I can still recite certain editorials by heart because I looked at them so many times. There simply was no other source back then.
DL Exactly — it’s a bit like how, even today, I still know who played the third keyboard from the right on a Lloyd Cole and the Commotions record, simply because I spent hours lying on my bed, studying it. At that moment, fashion, music, and somehow also a certain kind of politics came together — this flirting with radical chic, at least a little. You could walk into the Rote Flora wearing Yves Saint Laurent — that was perhaps the very essence of it all. And I have to say, I found that incredibly appealing.
DVL And it worked the other way around as well — and that also had a lot to do with your White Album. You opened up an entire world for me, especially with films — particularly Italian horror movies — but also with post-structural theory and conceptual art. Within electronic music — especially house music — there was still the possibility to break radically with certain conventions. Something that had happened earlier as well, through punk or indie within rock music — but later on, it became less possible, as everything had already been more or less thoroughly explored.
It was really the opposite of hedonism and partying for me — the very thing that used to happen all the time at the Marlboro House Breakfasts. Suddenly people were saying: “No! We’re all in a terrible mood and deeply concerned, but we’re making house music anyways.”
But couldn’t one also say that there was something very dreamy about it — and of course, looking at how you all appeared back then, the way you were dressed— that was completely atypical of what you would normally associate with party-tracks, ravers, or the Love Parade?
Part of the circumstances, that made this attitude possible, was also due to the particular state of the music industry at the time— a moment when everyone was still recovering from the Nirvana shock. Major record labels channeled their anxiety of missing “the next big thing” into massively supporting indie labels financial in exchange for their A&R — there was money around.
DVL Exactly, exactly. Most indie labels at the time, including L’Age D’Or, had partly entered into cooperation with major labels — in our case too — and suddenly there was a bit of money.
DL A little bit of money — that’s putting it mildly. There was a lot of money! Ladomat 2000 had the same major deal and we redistributed the money very generously to artists, who sometimes produced highly obscure products for us — like a Daniel Pflumm video that basically just had one blinking single pixel in it. And of course, it never got played anywhere on television— but we still happily spent 30,000 Deutschmarks on it.
DVL Well, it was also the time when the music industry had almost reached the scale of the film industry. And it was the period when they were earning double for years — thanks to the shift to CDs. They released new albums that were massive successes on CD, and at the same time, many people repurchased their old albums on CD, albums they had previously only owned on vinyl.
At the same time, it was also the beginning of what one might call the neoliberal ideology: in the sense that all aspects of life were being increasingly commercialised — and that work, somehow, was also supposed to be fun at all times.
DL A total imperative of identification with the employer. Suddenly, there was this new silver Nike-sneaker bourgeoisie. People one thought had “made it” in their mid-twenties.
DVL By the mid-2000s, unfortunately, things started to go downhill pretty rapidly for Lado and others. You could feel that it was happening to many such labels — and to many distributors too.
DL I actually find it quite interesting that we somehow experienced the tail-end of a formerly flourishing cultural industry twice.
DVL That’s true — because when we started getting interested in the art world, it was more or less around the turn of the millennium. Before that, art had been something incredibly uninteresting and deeply niche. And then it began: you could feel a certain uplifting atmosphere starting to build, with art splitting between the mainstream and the underground. People started going to galleries and museums, and it all became more hedonistic and exciting. Art became almost a form of nightlife — you would go to openings and vernissages all the time.
DL That was surely that decade from around 1998 until the financial crisis in 2008. I find it interesting that both this certain Gen-X attitude — the “Don’t Sell Out” ethos of indie music — and the “non-productive attitude” of context-art are, in the end, stances that one must in some way be able to afford. We also came out of a time — I don’t know — the 1980s and 1990s were, in a way, relatively free of problems.
DVL In retrospect, it certainly feels that way — although I would like to offer a small objection. Because in the 1980s, there was the enormous pandemic of AIDS. It was largely suppressed and pushed onto a marginalized, discriminated minority. But it was a pandemic — and if we’re honest, it has never truly been defeated to this day. In my homosexual adolescence, there were basically only two scenarios: Either you had sex, contracted AIDS, and died — or you didn’t have sex and killed yourself.
DL Back to the 2000s I think it was interesting that you could actually make a relatively good living from music — and that you truly had the time to do your “work,” in quotation marks. Read an incredible amount, watch countless films, visit exhibitions, and completely surrender yourself to it all.
DVL It was certainly a historical exception. Before that, I don’t think it would have been quite so easily possible either. The music industry was booming at the time, festivals and clubs suddenly emerged — places where you could perform.
DL Exactly. Everything was quite fine. You had your gig on the weekend — and afterwards, you were free again.